bugle

• IPA^(key): /ˈbjuːɡəl/
• Rhymes: -uːɡəl

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

Inherited from Middle English bugle, from Anglo-Norman bugle (“young ox, heifer; bugle”), from Latin būculus (“young ox, steer”).

bugle (plural bugles)

1. A horn used by hunters.
3. (music) A simple brass instrument consisting of a horn with no valves, playing only pitches in its harmonic series

   Hypernyms: musical instrument, wind instrument, brass instrument

   Coordinate terms: cornet, flugelhorn, trumpet

4. The sound of something that bugles.

   the bugle of an elk

5. A sort of wild ox; a buffalo.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faery Queene, page 88:

     Then tooke that squire an horne of bugle small, Which hong adowne his side in twisted gold And tassels gay.

   • 1678, Joannes Jonstonus (M.D., Polonus.), A Description of the Nature of Four-Footed Beasts, page 31:

     The tongue so rough, that were it licks, it fetches blood. The Greeks used not these, nor Bugles in Physick, not having tried their vertue; though Indian-woods are full of such, yet parts of them are of more efficacy in medicine, (it is thought) than any part of ordinary Oxen.

   • 1928, Lora Sarah La Mance, The House of Waltman and Its Allied Families, page 17:

     All in the merry strand, With the ran, ran tan, And the tippy, tippy tran, And away with the royal bow! wow! wow! And the riddle diddle do, And the bugle's horn, For into the woods we'll run, brave boys, And into the woods we'll run.

   • 1992, William Shakespeare, Holger Klein, Much Ado about Nothing: A New Critical Edition, page 145:

     a hunting horn, origin. made of the horn of a "bugle" or wild ox

• → French: bugle

bugle (third-person singular simple present bugles, present participle bugling, simple past and past participle bugled)

1. To announce, sing, or cry in the manner of a musical bugle.
   • 1952, Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Penguin Books (2014), page 128:

     “It was as though the very constellations knew our impending sorrow,” he bugled, his head raised to the ceiling, his voice full-throated.

• trumpet

From Late Latin bugulus (“a woman's ornament”), probably from Latin būculus.

bugle (plural bugles)

1. (fashion) A tubular glass or plastic bead sewn onto clothes as a decorative trim
   • 1766, [Oliver Goldsmith], chapter 4, in The Vicar of Wakefield: […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), Salisbury, Wiltshire: […] B. Collins, for F[rancis] Newbery, […], →OCLC:

     How well so ever I fancied my lectures against pride had conquered the vanity of my daughters; yet I still found them secretly attached to all their former finery: they still loved laces, ribbands, bugles and catgut […]

   • 1925, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 20, in Sam the Sudden‎^[1]:

     With the exception of a woman in a black silk dress with bugles who, incredible as it may seem, had ordered cocoa and sparkling limado simultaneously and was washing down a meal of Cambridge sausages and pastry with alternate draughts of both liquids, the place was empty.

   • 2026 January 20, Vanessa Friedman, “The Way ‘Rich’ Once Looked”, in The New York Times‎^[2], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:

     Billionaires wear hoodies and sneakers, not taffeta and bugle beads.

     (Can we archive this URL?)

bugle (comparative more bugle, superlative most bugle)

1. (obsolete) jet-black
   • c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene v]:

     Bugle eyeballs.

From Middle English bugle (“bugleweed”), from Anglo-Norman and Old French bugle, from Medieval Latin bugilla, probably related to Late Latin bugillo.

bugle (plural bugles)

1. A plant in the family Lamiaceae grown as a ground cover Ajuga reptans, and other plants in the genus Ajuga.

   Synonyms: bugleweed, carpet bugle, ground pine, common bugle

• Bugle (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “* bugle”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “bugle_n3”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

• bulge

• IPA^(key): /byɡl/

• Audio (Lyon, France):

  (file)

Borrowed from English bugle, from Anglo-Norman bugle, from Latin būculus.

bugle m (plural bugles)

1. bugle (hunting horn)
2. flugelhorn (brass instrument)

Inherited from Old French bugle, probably borrowed from Medieval Latin bugula, probably related to Late Latin bugillō (compare bouillon).

bugle f (plural bugles)

1. bugle, bugleweed (plant)

• “bugle”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

From Latin būculus, named after the shape of an ox's or cow's horn.

bugle oblique singular, m (oblique plural bugles, nominative singular bugles, nominative plural bugle)

1. buffalo, wild ox
2. young ox, heifer
3. bugle (type of horn, often used in battle)
   • late 13th century, Geoffrey of Monmouth, edited by E. J. Hathaway, P. T. Ricketts, C. A. Robson, and A. D. Wilshere, Fouke le Fitz Waryn (Anglo-Norman Text Society; volume 26–28), Basil Blackwell, published 1975, page 3, lines 6–8:

     oy un chevaler soner un gros bugle

     (I) hear a knight sounding a large bugle

Borrowed from French bugle, from English bugle.

• IPA^(key): /ˈbuɡle/ [ˈbu.ɣ̞le]
• Rhymes: -uɡle
• Syllabification: bu‧gle

bugle m (plural bugles)

1. (music) a bugle [from 19th c.]

   Synonym: clarín

• “bugle”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025
• “bugle”, in Diccionario histórico de la lengua española [Historical Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], launched 2013, →ISSN